Home Again

"Teacher! Teacher! Teacher!" The shouts came from about 30 little children. Hermano Juan let us out of the back of Familia Feliz's dump truck. Showers of hugs and kisses and talking followed as we were reunited with everyone. It was such a happy moment! The other student missionaries and I had a spectacular trip across South America, but we were also so glad to be home.

A happy reunion with Florita

As soon as the boys unloaded our bags, we started working. The kids seemed to have saved their aches and pains for my return, so the rest of my day was filled with running around with bandaids, ace wraps, medicine, and so on. Strep throat was going around, along with ear infections, toothaches, chicken pox, and various other skin conditions. Partway through the afternoon, Melissa called me over to a lady and her daughter that she was talking to. She said, "This little girl is moving in. She had Chikungunya disease and can't walk." I talked to the mom for a minute and took the 9-year-old girl from her mom. She was so weak and in pain, with swollen joints. I carried her across campus and left her with Katie-Jane. Walking to my house, I desperately started looking up research on Chikungunya. I knew nothing other than the fact that it is a mosquito born illness. After a while, I began to understand that she was most likely in the post-infection arthritic stage, which can last for months to years. It has some similarities to Lyme disease, which I am super familiar with since I had it a couple of years ago. I started her on some anti-inflammatory medication and talked with Katie-Jane about starting an anti-inflammatory diet.

Thursday passed in a blur. Campus was a lot different than when we had left, as a Canadian mission group of around 30 have been working here for a month. Several of them were living in the clinic, and many more upstairs in our house. The leader is a young nurse, and it has been so nice to have her around! We work really well together and it is so nice to be able to split the work. The team also re-constructed several of the houses' sewer systems, built us a new grocery inventory room (so exciting and much easier for me to organize!) and rebuilt the roof of the church. There are also two new volunteer families from Venezuela that just arrived. The father of one of the families is an electrician and has re-wired nearly all of our electricity! This has been such a blessing, as our power goes out almost daily. It also makes us eligible for wifi, so we will be able to work a lot more effectively on campus. In fact, I'll be able to switch from paper charting to online charting!

The switch in charting is a miracle in and of itself. I reached out to an American charting company about their non-profit free system last week. They apologized and said they would have to charge us nearly $500 a month since we are not a legal non-profit stationed in the US. After hearing a little bit more about the clinic, they asked to see our website. Treson had finished completely reconstructing and modernizing our website hours before after working on it for months. After they viewed the website, I got an email. It didn't have any explanation in it, it just said, "Welcome to our charting system. Here is your username and password." I'm so grateful for this blessing. It will save so much time and protect our records from the rain and humidity that is always threatening to destroy them.

In the evening, I heard Lisiane calling my name. She worriedly told me that we were all of a sudden in charge of having supper cooked for the Harding house and missionaries (about 60 people in total) within an hour. We were short on groceries and they're mostly vegan, so we wracked our brains trying to decide what to make. We finally settled on arepas with tomato salad. As Emilianne, Lisiane, and Maddy frantically chopped and made salad, I ran around mixing arepa dough, forming them, and frying. Within a little over an hour, we had 150 arepas and a giant bowl of salad that everyone was happily devouring. Quite the excitement!

Success!

On Friday, our little Chikungunya girl was really sick. She had slept all day and all night both of the days since she arrived, and we were worried. I took her into a clinic in town, where the doctor became worried that she was having heart and kidney issues. We agreed to come back Sabbath morning. We made it back to campus just in time to eat some leftover supper and open the Sabbath. I spent the evening in the Harding house, which has exploded as a toddler house, and rocked little kids to sleep until late.

Two new little boys

Baby Jose

Sabbath dawned bright and early as Alex took the little girl and me to the clinic. She cried through a blood test and urine sample. When the results came back, we found out she was extremely anemic. An afternoon of searching for an open x-ray and ultrasound clinic followed. After visiting 2 hospitals and 4 clinics, we finally found places and carried the x-ray film and ultrasound print back to the original clinic. Everyone was praying that she wasn't internally bleeding, and praise God, she wasn't everything came back normal. We headed back home in time for sundown worship with everyone. Afterward, Carlo and I found out we would be moving into the Leones' house for 2 days starting Sunday morning. I did my medicine rounds at 10 and proceeded to get as much sleep as possible.

It was so good to be with my boys again! A lot are on vacation still, so we only had 6 boys. We have two new little ones, Jesus and Valentin. They warmed up to us quickly. Everyone is on summer schedule right now (the seasons are switched here), so we had a very calm Sunday. They road their new bikes around campus and colored while we cooked and monitored. Little Jesus got bitten by a Buna ant, one of the bullet ants that have overtaken campus. They bite horribly, sometimes even causing fevers for days. They're considered by some the most painful bug bites in the world, and leave their victims writhing in pain for hours to days. Thankfully, Jesus took it pretty well and with some benadryl, ibuprofen, and charcoal poultices, he was doing better in a couple hours. We also were pet-sitting a baby Jochi for Hermano Juan and Emi, and had to feed it three times a day. It was a little scary with its giant claws!

Juancito and the Jochi

Making biscuits and gravy

One of our new little boys, Jesus

Monday morning found me in a town clinic again, this time with a very sick student missionary for some labs. Amongst the Leones' morning activities, Diego decided to start a fire in the jungle in order to kill the Bunas. He was swiftly taken to the director's house for "suspension", so we only had 5 boys for the day. When I returned, I made a lunch of lentil burgers with Treson, something we hadn't eaten in a long time! While the three older boys rode their bikes, Valentin tried his hardest to help Carlo dig out holes for a foundation for a significant addition to the house that the boys are building. Since Jesus and I weren't doing a whole lot, we decided to make slushies for the those digging. Jesus' 5-year-old self was so excited! He was determined to keep it a surprise and kept asking me, "Is it done yet? Can we check the freezer?"

Jesus and Valentin monitoring the construction

After a perfect summer day, we tucked the boys into bed and waited for Hermano Juan and Hermana Emi. I did my medicine rounds and we watched the Jochi run around the house exploring. Just before midnight, we heard the truck coming rumbling into the front yard. We picked up our things and went home, where I found another Buna bite patient.

Tuesday was a day of babies. Maddy was gone on her day off, and she heads up the. daycare team of the Harding house. Treson and Lisiane took turns with the toddlers and I took baby Jose for the morning and early afternoon. He was a cute little companion, happily eating lime pieces in the front pack as I made tea syrup for the clinic and worked on paperwork. My paperwork overflowed into Wednesday, where I sat for most of the day charting and creating a promotional video for Familia Feliz. The evening progressed with a beautiful worship with the Canadian mission team. I once again had baby Jose, and introduced him to a kitten during supper, which was so cute! He loved it.

Jose Enjoying his lime

And that brings us to today! I've been up late this week, as I've had 8 medications to give across campus at 10pm each night, but I've been able to sleep a little longer since I don't need to have breakfast ready before school. While it's been a super busy schedule, it has been a lot calmer than usual and a nice transition back into the swing of things. In two weeks, we'll start school again and there will be around 80 kids living on campus! That's 20 more than last semester; we are bursting at the seams. We keep saying, "How on earth are we going to do this?" But if there's anything I've learned at Familia Feliz, it's that God always provides. It will all work out. He's brought these kids here, and we're so excited to welcome them into the family. We've been so blessed by the people and means he has sent to help us expand and improve. I can't wait to see where he takes us next!

Here are a few pictures from our Christmas break trip: